Occupational Stress: Toward a More Integrated Framework

Peter M. Hart and Cary L. Cooper (2001)

The organisational health framework is a theory-based approach outlining how key individual and organisational factors interact to determine employee wellbeing and organisational performance. This review focuses on a particular research model derived from the organisational health framework, and summarises studies that have investigated the applicability of the framework across different occupational groups.

Conventional Wisdom is Often Misleading: Police Stress Within an Organisational Health Framework

Peter M. Hart and Peter Cotton (2003)

Occupational stress among police officers is often viewed as an unfortunate, but inevitable part of police work. Although this view dominates much of the discussion about police stress in scientific, management, and other professional forums, there is no compelling evidence to support the view that police officers are any more or less stressed than other occupational groups.

In this study, we examined a theoretical model that integrates organizational climate, job satisfaction, contextual performance behaviours, and customer satisfaction. Structural equation analyses showed that turnover intentions and the extent to which employees focused on helping one another, rather than customers, influenced customers’ satisfaction with the organization’s products and services.

Voluntary and Involuntary Absence: The Influence of Leadership, Work Environment, Affect and Group Size

James Tan and Peter M. Hart (2011)

This study examined a theoretical model that linked leadership, positive and negative workgroup environments, positive and negative affect and workgroup size with group-level voluntary and involuntary absence. Overall, the results demonstrated that voluntary and involuntary absence each had different antecedents. Voluntary absence was predicted by school size and positive affect whereas involuntary absence was primarily predicted by negative aspects of the work environment. These findings have important implications on the way that researchers and practitioners should approach the subject of absenteeism.

Occupational Wellbeing and Performance: A Review of Organisational Health Research

Peter Cotton and Peter M. Hart (2003)

The organisational health framework is a theory-based approach delineating how key individual and organisational factors interact to determine employee wellbeing and organisational performance. The present review focuses on a particular research model derived from the organisational health framework, and summarises studies that have investigated the applicability of the framework across different occupational groups. In particular, the review focuses on the determinants of employee wellbeing, discretionary performance, and withdrawal behaviour intentions, including the submission of stress-related workers compensation claims and the use of uncertified sick leave. We also discuss research that links employee wellbeing to performance-related outcomes, and provide an overview of the major practical implications stemming from the research to date. The consistency of findings across a range of settings demonstrates that the organisational health framework provides a robust evidence-based approach to the management of employee wellbeing and the prevention of occupational stress.

Understanding Engagement: Its Structure, Antecedents and Consequences

Peter M Hart, Catherine L. Caballero and Wendy Cooper (2010)

This study examined the antecedents and consequences of a multi-dimensional model of engagement. It was proposed that engagement is a positive psychological state that can be defined in terms of individual and workgroup morale, affective and continuance commitment, and job involvement. Moreover, it was hypothesised that psychological climate would be a predictor of the five components of engagement, and that psychological climate and engagement would contribute to performance-related outcomes. The relationship between psychological climate, engagement and performance-related outcomes was examined through a series of confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation analyses using data obtained from 592 academic staff from a large Australian university. The results provided strong empirical support for the proposed five-factor model of engagement and demonstrated that engagement mediated the relationship between psychological climate and performance-related outcomes. Moreover, the results strongly suggested that engagement programs should focus on improving workgroup morale and that this will best be achieved by focusing on the organisational characteristics that underpin psychological climate.

Using Employee Opinion Surveys to Identify Control Mechanisms in Organizations

Peter M. Hart and Alexander J. Wearing

Although control is a central concept in the study of human factors, and an important variable in the investigation of individual differences, it has been largely ignored in the field of organisational behaviour. One reason for this apparent disregard may be that few usable models are readily available that indicate how control structures may be measured and implemented. The goal of this article is to show how data from the employee opinion surveys (EOSs) can be used to develop a model of the operation of an organisation that indicates which control procedures or managerial interventions are likely to be effective in changing the level and/or quality of the output of that organization. Accordingly, we work through three concrete examples that illustrate the ‘nuts and bolts’ issues involved in constructing specific models of organisations that indicate what interventions are likely to be effective in managing their ‘bottom line’ variables.